Some Nigerians have lost their lives and
property because the marine unit of the
Nigeria Police lacks sophisticated
equipment to engage criminals and
embark on rescue operations on the
country’s waterways, writes JESUSEGUN
ALAGBE
A glimpse of an oncoming speedboat
stuffed with men wearing black uniforms
and helmets on the waterway linking
Lagos communities – Ikorodu and CMS –
made for a frightening look at first.
Unlike passenger boats, like the one
Saturday PUNCH correspondent was
travelling in, the men in the oncoming
boat were wearing distinctive black
vests, and it was only when they
approached that they were recognised
to be policemen patrolling the
waterway.
If not for the ‘POLICE’ inscription on
their uniforms and the guns they were
carrying, one would probably think at
first that the men were fishermen
because the boat they were patrolling in
was not in any way different from the
one used by successful fishermen in the
country.
On approach, the boat driver of the one
our correspondent was travelling in
slowed down, making way for the
policemen to check the passengers, and
after a few minutes of checking, he
zoomed off.
But the police boat looked old and
rickety, plus there were no special eye-
engaging equipment mounted on it to
launch attacks should they come across
criminals who use the waterway to
perpetrate their activities.
There had been several reports on
kidnapping, armed robbery, oil pipeline
vandalism and piracy being carried out
by the perpetrators of these crimes
through the country’s waterways, and
most times, they were never caught.
In fact, the International Maritime
Bureau said that in the first half of 2015,
250 crew members of ships were taken
hostage, 14 assaulted, 10 kidnapped,
nine injured and one killed in incidents
of piracy and armed robbery against
ships across the globe, in a report by
shipsandports.com.ng.
The IMB’s Piracy Reporting Centre
tallied 134 incidents of piracy and armed
robbery, an increase on the 116 reports
in the first half of 2014, whereby pirates
boarded 106 vessels, carrying out 13
hijackings and 15 attempted attacks.
Of this number, three events were
reported in the second quarter of the
year with a total of 11 piracy incidents
accounting for 10 crew kidnappings
recorded in Nigeria in the first half of
2015.
“A number of crewmembers were also
injured and kidnapped in past attacks.
Generally, all waters in/off Nigeria
remain risky. Vessels are advised to be
vigilant, as many attacks may have gone
unreported,” IMB said.
Saturday PUNCH findings revealed that
these criminals have been successful in
their operations to a large extent
because the marine unit of the Nigeria
Police, as well as the Nigerian Navy,
lacks highly sophisticated boats and
other gadgets to fight the hoodlums.
This would explain why in the morning
hours of Wednesday, June 24, 2015, an
armed robbery gang, reportedly led by a
woman, unleashed terror on customers
and staff of two different banks in
Ikorodu, Lagos, carting away about
N100m from the two banks.
After the operation, the suspects were
said to have escaped in two speedboats
via the Ikorodu waterway; they were
arrested by the police few days later,
though.
A Lagos-based security analyst, Mr. Femi
Adeseun, told our correspondent that if
there were well-trained marine police
officers with sophisticated speedboats,
they could have chased after the
hoodlums on the water at that very
moment and arrested them.
He said, “Those armed robbers had
perhaps researched that we had no
police officers who could chase them on
the water at that time. That was why
they used the route to escape. They did
their homework before choosing to
escape via water. It is a known fact that
generally, the Nigeria Police lack
adequate and advanced weapons to fight
crimes. And if the ones on land have
not got what is needed to perform
excellently, how much more the ones
on water?
“At times, I wonder if the police we
have can truly fight crimes with those
old weapons they carry about. If the
police on land drive rickety trucks, it is
expected that officers in the marine unit
will paddle canoes. Until there is a total
transformation of all security agencies in
Nigeria, this problem will linger on. It’s
just an overhaul of the security forces
that we need; our problem is not that
we don’t have the resources to equip
these guys.”
Analysts have said Nigeria does not lack
resources to buy advanced equipment
for its security forces, including the
Nigeria Police, being one of the top 10
countries sitting on massive oceans of
oil, with proven crude oil reserves of
about 37 billion barrels, a little lesser
than those boasted by the United Arab
Emirates, Kuwait and some others,
according to a recent Barclays’ research.
“Nigeria is rich and could buy equipment
for the Nigeria Marine Police, but
corruption will not let that happen,”
Adeseun said.
On October 6, 2015, 44 heavily-armed
robbers, reportedly dressed in army
camouflage, invaded two banks in the
FESTAC area of Lagos, dashing away with
millions of naira.
The robbers were said to have operated
for about two hours without any
disruption and after they were done,
they escaped via the 4th Avenue canal,
close to the scene of their operation.
But they didn’t escape without wreaking
havoc on human lives as they killed
three persons, including a woman and
her two-year-old baby, while also
wounding some of the customers of the
banks they invaded.
“The police got there minutes after the
robbery which lasted for about two
hours. The bandits escaped through the
4th Avenue canal and also from the
23rd Road. This happened right in my
backyard,” an eyewitness to the
incident, Toni Charles, wrote on
Facebook.
“The robbers couldn’t have escaped
through the waterway if they didn’t
think it was safe for them and if they
knew they would be hunted by the
marine unit of the police in Lagos,”
another eyewitness and FESTAC
resident, Thomas Enyi, said.
The observatory tour by Saturday
PUNCH correspondent to the CMS and
Apapa areas of Lagos, where the marine
police usually park their boats showed
that navigation panels, among other
features, that modern and sophisticated
boats possess, were lacking on the
police speedboats.
Other than the fact that the people in
them were policemen, the boats had no
distinguishable features to those our
correspondent had seen in states like
Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa, where their
main mode of transportation is water.
After seeing all these, it was not
surprising that on August 12, 2015,
about thirty minutes after a Bristow
helicopter carrying 12 people from an oil
rig in the South-South crashed into the
Lagos lagoon in Oworonshoki, some
officers belonging to the marine unit of
the Nigeria Police arrived at the scene in
speedboats looking like those used by
the local boat operators who had
initiated the search and rescue
operation.
Apart from their distinctive blue colour
and the ‘POLICE’ inscriptions on the
speedboats deployed in the scene, it
could be safe to say that marine police
in Nigeria lack well-equipped
speedboats to fight crimes and embark
upon rescue missions on the waterways.
“Are these the boats our marine police
use? I wonder who must have pocketed
the police patrol boat contract money
and bought them fishing canoes
instead!” our correspondent overheard
a resident in the area asking a colleague
at the crash scene.
A hilarious but serious comment,
perhaps!
A look at the marine police in Nigeria
The marine police, also known in some
countries as water police, harbour
patrols, port police, maritime police,
nautical patrols, bay constables or river
police, are police officers, usually a
department of a larger police
organisation, who patrol in watercraft.
Experts said their patrol areas may be
coastal seawaters, rivers, estuaries,
harbours, lakes, canals or a combination
of these.
Apart from ensuring the safety of water
users, they are also responsible for
enforcing laws relating to water traffic,
preventing crimes on vessels, banks and
shores, providing search and rescue
services and allowing the police to reach
locations not easily accessible from land.
They are also responsible for coastal
security, conservation law enforcement,
immigration and smuggling patrols, and
diving search operations.
Because of their specialised duties, they
are expected to possess equipment
ranging from personal watercraft and
inflatable boats to large seagoing craft,
though most police vessels are small to
medium, fast motor launches.
Study indicates that in some places,
these vessels incorporate a firefighting
capability through a fixed deck nozzle
and that operators of these vessels are
generally trained in many rescue
disciplines including, first aid, vessel
dewatering, firefighting, rescue and
scuba diving.
In 2013, the Nigeria Police established
the Maritime Police Command, a fusion
of the Marine Police Command, the
Police Ports Authority Command and
the Inland Waterways Formation, with
the headquarters in Lagos.
The command is charged with the
responsibility of maintaining law and
order and providing adequate security in
the country’s ports and harbours,
including tackling contemporary security
challenges such as armed robbery,
piracy, kidnapping, gun running and
other related crimes in the creeks,
harbours and territorial waterways –
functions similar to those performed by
the marine police of other countries in
the world.
However, findings by Saturday PUNCH
have shown that the marine police have
not been adequately equipped with
sophisticated weapons to fight the listed
crimes.
An officer in the marine unit of the
Nigeria Police spoke to our
correspondent on the condition of
anonymity that there were no such
sophisticated equipment available to
them to fight crimes.
The source said some of them were
usually surprised when Nigerians
challenge them on why they run from
confronting criminals sometimes.
“When we lack advanced weapons to
fight, we cannot confront them. Some of
us are never afraid; if we have good
equipment and enjoy good welfare, this
will boost our morale and we will
perform our duties well. I don’t think
we have boats that can race speedily,
especially if we are to go on rescue
operations. The ones we have are very
low-powered,” the source said.
Another anonymous source, who works
in the marine unit of the Nigeria Police,
also told our correspondent that it was
true that they lacked sophisticated
equipment to fight crimes on
waterways.
He said, “One of our problems here is
that we’ve not had a serious Federal
Government that would carry out a
reformation of the police as a whole. We
buy our uniforms, we buy helmets, we
buy life jackets because these things are
not usually provided for us.
“If at all they are going to be provided,
we wait for many months, even years
sometimes, before we get those things.
Now ask me, how could we do more
than we’re capable of?
“We want to use sophisticated
equipment too, but are we going to
contribute money to purchase them? By
the way, where is the money? We don’t
live in good houses, we borrow money
to cater for our families, we are not
taken care of. So, how do we engage
criminals with low morale?”
An Abuja-based policy analyst, Jide
Oluyemi, opined that Nigerians
sometimes encourage the ‘recklessness’
and nonchalant attitudes of the leaders
of the country, one of the reasons why
some institutions like the Nigeria Police
are not working well as expected.
He said, “When issues like this are
discussed, there is usually an outrage by
some people who believe Nigeria should
not be compared with other countries of
the world. But how can we grow
without comparing? They usually say we
just got democracy; they enjoy
pampering our leaders and giving
reasons why things are not yet working.
These leaders tell us stories like, ‘Our
predecessors left behind a huge debt,’
‘They have damaged the system before
we got here,’ and we eventually take to
pitying them.
“For instance, oil pipeline vandals and
bunkerers have done immeasurable
damage to the economy of this country
because we don’t have enough
equipment and personnel to resist
them. These criminals buy advanced
weapons, but we deprive our security
forces of such. How will they secure the
waterways?”
Nigerian marine police and others: A
comparison
A look at the boats used by the marine
police in countries like Spain, Croatia,
Germany, Finland, Egypt, the United
States, South Africa, among others,
shows that they have deck nozzles and
firefighting capabilities.
These equipment, generally termed
police watercraft, are displayed on the
websites of the marine police units of
some of the mentioned countries.
Police watercraft refers to boats or other
vessels that are used by police agencies
to patrol bodies of water.
Employed on rivers, police boats also
have high-performance engines in order
to catch up with fleeing fugitives on the
water.
These equipment have been in use by
some of the countries mentioned above
since the beginning of the 20th century
and the types being used include patrol
boats, fast pursuit vessels, motorboats,
airboats, rigid-hulled inflatable boats
and others.
“We don’t have such equipment. I only
see them in movies,” another officer of
the Nigeria Marine Police told Saturday
PUNCH on the condition of anonymity.
A Nigerian counterterrorism expert in
the US and publisher of the African
Journal of Counterterrorism, Oludare
Ogunlana, told our correspondent in an
email that it is sad that the Nigeria
Marine Police are not well-equipped to
do their work.
While describing it as a general problem,
he said all sectors had suffered neglect
for many years due to corruption and
lack of vision by the leaders.
He said, “The former Chief of Defence
Staff (Alex Badeh) confessed recently
that the last time military hardware was
bought was in 2006. The same problem
is applicable to our intelligence and law
enforcement agencies. Their equipment
are obsolete, the recruitment was based
on nepotism and not on merit. There is
lack of training and personnel
development; the people at the
frontline are poorly remunerated and all
these have led to low morale.
“On the other hand, criminals are
spending money on sophisticated
equipment. They are more prepared
and determined than those we trust our
security upon. The implication of this on
our national security is obvious – we are
living in perilous times.”
Ogunlana said he believes that the
present government would do enough
to equip the marine police with
advanced weapons to fight crimes on
the waters.
He added, “The current government is
still in planning stage, taking inventory
of what we have. Planning stage is very
essential. President Muhammadu Buhari
was a former general and military
commander. He understands the
importance of strategic planning. It is
not only about weapons and technology;
we need quality people of integrity and
strong character to drive the process.
Let us be optimistic that the present
administration will do something drastic
to reform all our security agencies and
equip them to face all forms of threat
we face today in Nigeria.
“Also, I completely agree with the
President that the Nigeria defence
industry should set target to start
producing some of the equipment
locally. If Pakistan and India are
producing military hardware, what stops
Nigeria? South Africans are good at
producing battle tanks. Libyans, under
Ghadaffi, were able to manufacture
their equipment locally.
“I remember that former President
Olusegun Obasanjo appointed former
Military Administrator of Lagos State,
Gen. Buba Marwa, as head of the
Defence Industry Corporation of Nigeria
in 2002 and they started all these
projects. I think it is a laudable plan that
can help reduce the amount of money
we spend on equipment. Nigeria can
manufacture rifles, speedboats and
operation vehicles and other basic
hardware.”
Maritime security essential for
economic prosperity
Successful launching of attacks against
hoodlums who use the waterways and
apprehending them would make way for
a prosperous Nigeria and Africa as a
whole, a researcher with the African
Centre for Strategic Studies,
Washington, Dr. Assis Malaquias, said in
an article.
He is one out of the many who believe
that maritime security is crucial for the
continent’s economic development and
overall security.
“African trade is becoming more
expensive and less economical due to
the lack of adequate security presence
in Africa’s maritime spaces. Much
remains to be done in terms of maritime
assets, capabilities, and tactics as well as
strengthening legal, legislative and
institutional arrangements,” he said.
Effort to fight crimes on waterways
As a result of the recent robbery
incidents whereby the perpetrators
escaped via the waterways, the Lagos
State House of Assembly has focused on
how to tighten security on the
waterways in the state.
The House also called on the Federal
Government to direct the marine police
– and the Nigerian Navy – to provide
adequate security on the waterways in
the state.
A lawmaker, Olumuyiwa Jimoh,
representing Apapa Constituency 2,
lamented that armed robbers were
trying to place Lagos State under siege
and that the Ikorodu robbery incident
was similar to the one that occurred in
Lekki recently.
“The armed robbers operated
commando-like, unchallenged, and
operated with highly-sophisticated
equipment and highly-experienced
individuals. We should wake up to
strengthen the control and security of
our waterways. We should work with
the communities along the waterways
for intelligence purposes,” he said.
More challenges and the way forward
There is no doubt that the Nigeria
Marine Police is having challenges
dealing with crimes on the waterways.
However, the Nigeria Police said it had
been looking into the challenges faced
by its marine unit and looking for ways
to make it work effectively.
Despite several calls and text messages
to the spokesperson for the Nigeria
Police, Bisi Kolawole, to seek for
comments on the issues at hand, she
has didn’t respond.
But a former spokesperson, Emmanuel
Ojukwu, told the News Agency of Nigeria
recently that all broken-down boats of
the marine unit of the police would be
repaired, adding that efforts were on to
purchase more advanced boats.
“This is to enable the unit’s officers and
men to meet the challenges of crime,
especially the ones posed by the recent
robbery attacks on the waterways. We
are re-strategising the marine police
operation to check criminal activities
using the inland waterways,” he said.
